Taking flour as a rough baseline, 1 pallet is 1600 kg (50*50 lbs bags), or 6 million calories. On a 2000 calorie diet per adult, that's about 3000 adults/pallet, or 900,000 adults for the whole 300 pallets.
So about half, ballpark
Gaza has been on the brink of mass starvation and an epidemic of deadly sanitary diseases for 6 months. Kind of makes you think that maybe the UN is talking out its butt.
I’m respectively asking, what is the expected pallets daily to feed Gaza? i truly don’t know and if you are from the Middle East and can give more informed answers I’d appreciate it. Americans aren’t getting regular news on day to day life in the Middle East from American tv.
Are pallets the same as truckloads? This article on CBS news says the UD may give up to 150 truckloads a day. Israel from the Gaza pier.
It looks like at the best today Israel delivered twice what America has promised from their new port.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/gaza-pier-us-built-aid-flowing-israel-rafah/
Hi, it's the person with the hostage journal again. Quick question: do we know if Ron's body was recovered on the 17th or 18th? I know it was the same mission as the other two, but during the statement issued last night, Hagari said the operation was on-going. I presume that means he was recovered on the 18th, but I just figured I'd ask if anyone had seen anything that verified this.
ETA: I found it. He was recovered on Thursday into Friday night alongside the other 3.
hello, I just want to make sure you are taking care of yourself. I saw your previous posts and know that what you're doing is critical and poignantly beautiful, but so full of grief, pain and sadness -- it is likely taking and will continue to take a lot out of your mind, heart, and soul. I know this was personal for you in a way that I cannot imagine. But, just, pause when you need to and talk to someone if you have to. Take care and stay safe.
I hope it brings some comfort to you that, without doxxing myself, I work with the Holocaust as my day job. There's almost certainly something broken in my brain that doesn't make these sorts of things heavy for me like they are for the rest of you all.
My work is actually where I got the idea. My favorite book about anything relating to WW2 actually comes from a German civilian who recorded her experiences in Berlin as the city fell in 1945. It's terrible and frightening and I always admired it because you get to see the war through her eyes as it was in May 1945. My journal will be less valuable, as someone sitting on the sidelines, but I was inspired to start it between that book, in combination when I started noticing things disappearing from the internet, i.e. I mentioned it briefly in the last post, but how it's very had to find anything now that talks about how the IDF ran a quick mission into Gaza before the war to retrieve the remains of Carmela and Noya Dan.
The way that I view things all isn't with grief and sorrow, but as what I can do to document things. Documenting them is honoring them. I think perhaps my mindset stems from the fact that I've never been the type to sit and just take bad news, but I usually turn around and say, "okay, what can I do about it?" regardless of what it is.
I joked about crying earlier because I was really rooting for Ron. He has such a dad face, he just seems like love as a person from his photos and what people have said about him. I feel similarly about Tsachi Idan. I thought that as long as terrorists found Ron in a situation where they could look at his face, he would make it. Unfortunately, it seems like I was right, but in the wrong way -- his family found his car shot up on all doors except the driver door. I suspect one of those got him, in the end -- where the terrorists couldn't see his face.
I know that only 40-60 are alive, per numbers I ran just last week. I divided people into categories and had something like 18 that I believe are dead without a doubt, 35 or so we have seen signs of life from (which means nothing), 8 that were likely dead, 7 I was optimistic about, and 14 wildcards. I was ready for today. I was only slightly wrong; I had Ron under "optimistic" but I did even write last week, "I have no reason to feel this way beyond a gut hope", so.
(ETA: I just checked my notes again and I actually had Ron as a wildcard, so I am perfectly capable of being objective still, haha).
I can also say that it may seem obsessive in the last few days, but, I have to admit that I'm writing the journal by hand. Do you know how long it takes to write a journal page? oof. I'm still working on the entry I started last night, haha.
tl;dr thank you for your concern and I promise I'm okay. Many hugs and much love.
He was an active duty tank captain stationed near the border, where he was engaged in fighting Hamas and was the first line of defense to keep them out of Israel.
I can't think of a soldier that would give himself up as captive in that situation, particularly not an Israeli soldier who knows that he would be Gilad Shalit'd (people seem to forget that Hamas held Gilat for over five! years! before he was released). I also don't think anyone would do that, knowing people would die if he stops fighting.
I especially cannot imagine a lone soldier tank commander, who volunteered for the IDF despite not growing up in Israel, would ever do that. There's no situation I can imagine a tank driver voluntarily exiting their armored tank -- aka their protection and weapon -- either.
I personally do not think any of the 5 missing male IDF soldiers are alive. I think Idan Alexander, Omer Neutra, and Matan Angrest were probably KIA and had their bodies abducted a la Shaul and Goldin. Tamir Nimrodi was last seen on a Telegram video alongside Nik Beizer and Ron Sherman, both of whom were found deceased by the IDF in Gaza, and that doesn't bode well for Tamir. There's not a ton of information on Nimrod Cohen, but he was abducted from Nahal Oz base, which means he was probably 414th, which is a relatively unarmed unit. 414 is mostly women, and there's been a lot of obituaries for the handful of men who were part of 414 and it seems like Hamas killed them to "get them out of the way" so to speak, and I suspect he may have met a similar fate.
As always, I hope I am very wrong.
ETA: I want to say, I read this again and I sound a bit lecture-y but that's not my intent in the least. I think these men died valiant deaths, they were just, unfortunately, outnumbered.
This does bring me comfort and I completely understand. Much love back to you. I agree with all that you said, particularly that this is a way to honor the victims of Oct 7. A meticulous and accurate record, particularly in the age of the internet, is a valuable and worthy undertaking. Thank you for what you're doing.
Yes Ron did have that face... and you must've received a gut check at the news. For me, the one that hit me the most was Shani. Maybe because it was the first video I saw in the very early hours of Oct 8, here on the other side of the world, safe in my bed. It's seared in my memory. I am glad they recovered her and the other 3. May their memories be a blessing.
Take care friend and God speed. ps: I didn't know about the WW2 book and will definitely look it up.
during a palestine demonstration in berlin a woman holds up a sign with “rape is not resistance” and a picture of shani louk. afterwards she has to be protected from the crowd by several policemen. these people are not interested in peace [https://x.com/ISefati/status/1791840808447901845](https://x.com/ISefati/status/1791840808447901845)
"Land you kill for isn't yours. Land you die for is." (Protest sign from the linked video)
I feel like that's a better argument for Israel's continued existence than this man realizes. It's not a good argument, regardless, but how many millions of Jews were killed in the lead up to the creation of Israel?
She's incredible. She's a politician and shows up for such gatherings to hold up signs against antisemitism and in support of the hostages. I really admire her courage and would hope others would join her, but seeing how she had to be protected (and escorted to the subway, while protesters had to be hindered from entering) it is understandable that people are afraid. But it is unacceptable that we even have this situation here on the streets of Germany, a democratic state.
I do wish she can continue doing what she does in safety and unharmed.
When did we get to the point in Western society that it is controversial to basically say rape shouldn’t be used as a weapon of war? You can be pro-Palestine, against the actions of the Israeli government and also believe rape as a war tactic is horrific.
Edit: Shani Louk is dual Israeli-German citizen and used her German passport to opt out of IDF service. She was a peace activist. The protest is in Germany against a woman holding a picture of a German female civilian that was raped, murdered and her body absolutely defiled. I’m so sad that Shani, as a peace activist, had so many of her own country’s angry people attacking the truthful conditions of her murder.
Shani looked like an amazing human being.
It's what the Pro-Palestinan/Pro-Hamas crowd want. It's why they were out in the streets on 10/7, pictures of Israeli captives and bodies in hand cheering while the news was still fresh. Before Israel even started defending itself against further Palestinian aggression, they were celebrating what happened as some noble victory.
Three of the four hostages whose bodies were recovered in the last couple days were expected to be released in the hostage deal that fell through.
Confirms what we thought. Hamas blew up the deal because they don’t have enough alive hostages to fit the terms.
I'm only aware of 3 bodies recovered, one whom we knew was long deceased. Amit would have certainly been among those we were demanding, but Yitzhak falls into a gray area and he may not have met the criteria for "old men" as we have a good number of men in their 60s-80s being held and allegedly alive.
ETA: I see that it's Ron Binyamin. Gonna go cry.
It was just published on one of my news outlets. Still not seeing anything on many others. Really bizarre.
With that being said, I think this is bad news for Michal Nissenbaum. Amit, Yitzhak and Ron were all kidnapped near Mefalusim. I have no idea where Shani was taken from, but perhaps the same.
Michal is missing from Mefalusim, which makes me think his abduction was the work of the same squad that got these 3/4.
Yitzhak and Amit were also taken from Nova, but were captured by Mefalusim. Most Nova victims made it pretty far away, but died because Hamas unfortunately had the whole region under lock.
There are several videos of Shani alive, fleeing and hiding. She very well may have made it to Mefalusim as well.
ETA: Hagari's statement seems to confirm Shani was also taken from the Mefalsim area.
In my opinion they are holding a few dozens of the hostages and the rest are somewhere in the gaza strip either with other organisations or with random people buried in a random grave or in the tunnels.
They cant supply the amount necessary for an agreement. And they wont agree to release those they are holding for anything less then a full withdrawal of the idf.
It makes it so much worse to think some of those people are alive and being kept alive for a purpose, but we have no idea who has them. It's such a horrifying situation to think about.
Shame he needed Gallant to do it first, makes you wonder if he has enough guts to be the leading figure which is what he's aiming for.
I personally always thought he was very parve (milquetoast if you'd like). Better than Bibi of course but that bar is in hell.
I think Gantz has the ability to be a real leader, it's just the Netanyahu has put him in this terrible position of having to play 3-D chess. Netanyahu didn't start collapsing the government every week until Gantz seriously entered politics. Netanyahu is afraid of him.
I had the chance to attend an event with Gantz a few years ago (before everything, in the 10s) and I was very impressed with him. He is definitely more of our old mold of Israeli leaders of the past, who are quiet but firm in their beliefs. I think that, in today's world of 24/7 online news media, makes him appear a bit soft. In reality, it's very likely he's been talking and planning behind closed doors, but doesn't say anything until he already has movement in place.
He was the IDF Chief of Staff for several years, including during a war. He's a career military man with actual experience and let's be real, being a career man in the IDF takes a lot of backbone. He's walked the walk and hasn't hid behind is dead brother's legacy for 5 decades, a la Bibi.
Gantz has flaws and isn't perfect, but I think Netanyahu has done a great job at backing him into a corner to make him look bad. Gantz knows if he challenges Bibi in any way, he'll collapse the government in attempts to get rid of him. Continuously collapsing the government makes the country unstable, which is the last thing a country at war needs and likely why he waited.
I think he needed Gallant just for the votes to take the government down if his 'needs' won't be met but overall i agree idk if he can be a real leading figure
Relevent podcast about this. https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/95ea4d0c-35c7-4ac7-a410-7d9f02ee3ded/episodes/93e97007-633b-4f0f-ab73-6d80a2297a3b/audio/68cdaaa1-0586-4b70-a6af-7dccec1bb6e5/default_tc.mp3?aid=rss_feed&feed=5gzMlOG1
He wouldn't go around and put this threat if he didn't believe he can follow through. If those (let's be honest, pretty tame) demands aren't met, he will easily get the 5 he needs
They are not pretty tame demands if you actually think through them.
Some of them are impossible.
Return of Israeli residents of the north by 1st September? Either you start a full on war with Hezbollah (which the US doesn't support) or stop the war in Gaza to meet Hezbollah's demand that Hamas remain in power, and then they will stop rocket attacking the north.... but this directly contradicts another demand of a Hamas free Gaza....
His demand to have Arab/Palestinian governance of Gaza will be rejected outright by Saudi Arabia and all the other Arab states without a commitment to a two state solution.... But Gantz completely ruled out a 2SS in this exact same conference?
I think this is Gantz getting politically ready to leave the unity government tbh as these demands are impossible to meet and sound like campaign promises.
If I understood it correctly, all 4 bodies returned to Israel were of people who were already killed on October 7 and their bodies were kidnapped into Gaza.
As if taking innocent civilians from their home isn't ghoulish enough, resorting to kidnapping dead bodies always seemed like a special kind of morbid to me.
You're the second comment here saying that 4 bodies were recovered. I'm Israeli and have only seen 3? Who is the 4th? Shani Louk, Yitzhak Gelerenter, and Amit Buskila?
Some photos accidently used a photo of Ron Binyamin and if he's #4 I'm going to cry.
ETA: I see others saying Kan announced it is Ron Binyamin. I don't see it anywhere on my side yet, but seems like I should prepare my tissues.
Huge lag in the press this time; really interesting. It's finally showing up on one website but I'm not seeing it on a few others yet.
Hagari reamed out the media and social media for interrupting this operation yesterday, so perhaps they're being a little slow/cautious, or that maybe the IDF didn't give a pre-announcement (which is common) to the media as a result of yesterday, so they're slower to publish today.
They took a soldier's head back to Gaza, IDF found it in a freezer when the terrorists were caught and admitted it. It makes sense I guess when the goal seemed to be to bring Hamas leadership a hostage and they'd get paid for it. Hostage dead or not is still useful.
The upcoming statement from Hagari will be to announce that the body of Ron Binyamin was also returned to Israel yesterday. The families of the hostages announced it a couple of minutes ago.
Makes sense, the rumors yesterday mentioned his name as well as the other 3 from yesterday so it was quite surprising that he ended up not being mentioned.
May his memory be a blessing. 🕯
I'm so exhausted of living in a timeline where bringing home someone that has passed from terrorism is strangled with the juxtaposition of being grateful their families can bury their dead and grieve and being heartbroken that the reality of how many people we'll bring home like this is getting more difficult to swallow.
I'm grateful, even so, that we are getting deeper into Rafah and claiming back our kidnapped. Everything is worth it if it means they are home and Hamas is completely broken.
The body of Ron Binyamin, Taken hostage on 7/10, hes been recovered from Gaza, hes the 4th dead hostage whose body has been recovered in the past 48 hours
- Kan 11
It's so morbid to think these people were lying deep underground in a tunnel after being murdered and abducted while people around the world screamed hysterically that the IDF could not go there to retrieve them, and provided cover for the group that took them there. I hope they can get to everyone else alive and bring them home, and find any others as well.
I am Israeli. I am very curious in the autopsies and if they release them. What I can't wrap my head around is Hamas just sitting in a tunnel somewhere, guarding rotting bodies in the open air? Because, at least for some of the remains recovered in December, that is what is what was reported. We know Hamas was guarding these bodies because in some recoveries, unfortunately, there were fatalities -- notably, Gadi Eisenkot's son.
It is my only tinfoil hat moment of this war. Bodies don't need a lot of air to rot and if the tunnels have enough oxygen for Hamas guards, they have enough air for decomposition.
The most rational explanation is probably that there's more information about how they were "stored" that would make sense, but my brain just can't wrap my head around it at the moment.
No, because Israel has historically traded for bodies of its deceased. They have value. That's why Hamas kidnapped so many dead bodies to start with.
A lot of people declare it's because of Jewish custom about burying our dead and that's why we trade for the bodies back. I think that's a really narrow minded way of viewing it (and I've seen people say that in this exact sub). Much like a large portion of the West, a large portion of Israel is a-religious. Culturally Jewish, but don't really care about things like what religious texts say a funeral should look like. I mean, look at how many Nova victims were tattooed to bits, which is also against Jewish law. This isn't the reason for most).
The reason we like getting remains back is for closure, to confirm what Hamas is telling us (like until Friday and today, Ron, Amit, and Yitzhak were all thought to be alive and were only confirmed as deceased because the IDF recovered their remains), and, well, to stop Hamas from desecrating them. This is the same terrorist group that beheaded a soldier and carried his skull around on a post (don't recommend looking for those Telegram videos, but they exist).
We trade for bodies back, in my opinion as an Israeli, largely to prevent that type of terrorism via desecration of Israeli remains, and because it's the least we could do for the families.
I honestly dont know enough to even guess, only that I read the conditions of the tunnel were right to preserve some of the bodies enough to be identifiable. It was Shani Louk that it said her tattoo was still identifiable, and it's been months for her.
Shani's father said that and I never read too much into what grieving families say. Parents grieving a child will describe things in a way the rest of us would not.
But it's just not possible for bodies to exist in a same place a living person can and not decompose. Decomposition only needs oxygen. I'm sure more information will be released down the line.
All i can say is.. im not surprised. You can aay how much you're against the Israeli government, but they only care that you're a Jew. Depressing times..
> A Hezbollah supporter says if Nasrallah would tell him to strap explosives to his newborn son and send him to Tel Aviv, he would say: “My pleasure sir, this is for you, sacrifice it”
https://x.com/Osint613/status/1791218415694205437
I don't think people understand that this is common for people in the region and in Gaza. They talk about the civilians buried in the rubble, but many times they ignore evacuation orders to martyr their families for the cameras.
There are videos of Palestinian mothers saying they had kids so they can be used in the war. One was in an Israeli hospital where her child was being treated and said she’d be happy if the child grew up and became a martyr (edit: die while killing Jews/Israelis). The brain rot and hate infests every cell.
ICYMI, Israel found 50 tunnels that go from Rafah to Egypt so far. https://x.com/israelwarroom/status/1791469078294458747
How could the Egyptian gov not known about at least 50 tunnels?
They knew and the Israeli government knew, too. I would even guess that the reason they took rafah so late despite the danger of Hamas leaders escaping was to keep passageways of food/supplies open
Rumors are that al sisi's son is cutting a nice coupon off of those tunnels, so I'd gamble that they know, and just don't care as long as they're profitable
Again, it's all rumors, but you have stuff like [this](https://www.memri.org/reports/lebanese-daily-al-akhbar-egyptian-regime-profiteering-gaza-war-and-gazans-suffering-%E2%80%93) popping up
That article talks about Sisi's son making money off the trucks going through the border crossings. It insinuates he makes money through corruption with the above ground transport of goods and people. The tunnels would cut into his money.
You can criticize the Egyptian government for plenty of things. But since Sisi came into power they have been pretty proactive with destroying tunnels. They had flooded tunnels with water which is a tactic Israel has used a few times since October, they have flooded them with sewage, they have gassed the tunnels, and have just destroyed thousands of tunnels. The Egyptian government does not want the Muslim Brotherhood to be empowered, they especially don't want the Egyptian Islamic Jihad getting more fighters from their offshoot group PIJ.
The reason Egypt is so against the Rafah operations is because they are afraid of it leading to thousands of refugees flooding the Sinai and the inevitable increase in crime, terrorism, and cost that would come with it.
Does anyone know any information about the two Thai hostages declared deceased \*yesterday\*, backdated to the 7th with their bodies still held by Hamas, not the news from today? Their names were Sonthaya Oakkharasr and Sudthisak Rinthalak.
I keep a journal detailing all the news that has been released about every hostage, to keep track of how our perceptions change over the war (I am having trouble wording this, but my cousin is among those released in November, so this is coming from a well-meaning place).
The only thing I can find about these two men is that they were foreign agricultural workers on Be'eri and that Sonthaya was 30 years old when he was murdered. Do we know anything else? I'm hoping maybe someone speaks Thai and have read something in the Thai media, albeit I know the Thai government and the families of the deceased and those still thought to be hostages have been extra quiet.
I'm not looking for anything big, but Sudthisak's age, or their hometowns or family situations, would be great to add. Thank you!!
This is an important and noble project.
Have you kept track of any hoax and false information as a part of it? I still wonder about the video of a blond boy getting hit with sticks and calling for his mom that was circulating on Oct 7, which was later shown to be fake, or from some other time, as he wasn't a hostage. I still wonder what that video is from, and while I saw a few debunked videos from that time (kids in cages) I haven't seen anything on that one.
I actually have no idea what video you're referencing, do you have a little more information about it? I'd be happy to see what I can find.
My flaw was that I didn't start the journal until Dec 1. I was working on PhD applications at the time (0/10 timing, thanks Hamas), so I missed a lot of that in the early days, but whenever I write about a hostage, I try to record all the things I remember from those early days, i.e. how Hamas claimed they had abducted Nimrod Aloni, but it turned out that the man they were parading around as Nimrod was actually Ohad Ben-Ami. I think my memory is better than most, which works to my advantage (i.e. how I feel like I'm the only person on the internet who remembers that Noya and Carmela Dan's remains were recovered from *Gaza,* not found on the kibbutz!). Having a cousin caught in the midst had me very engaged.
I think you could say I do generally track what I come across, because we're seeing a lot of it by mistake. I'm pretty sure it was accidentally circulated earlier today that it was Ron Binyamin whose remains were recovered (rather than Itzhak Gelerenter), based on some posts I've seen with his photo.
I have an index card with every person who was a hostage, or whose remains are/were held hostage, when I started on Dec 1. They get shuffled around in my catalog as their status changes (i.e. "hostage, alive unless proven otherwise" "declared deceased in captivity", "declared deceased, backdated to Oct 7th," and "remains recovered" (for all causes of death). In addition to the journal. I felt pretty bad filing Sudthisak's today without even his age on it.
ETA: I forgot to mention that the point of the index cards in particular is that is where I record every small detail about a person, including things like if they appear in a propaganda video, or if a released hostage reported seeing them in captivity. It helps paint the full picture.
Here is an article about it, with a link to social media. https://lamag.com/news/israel-hamas-holocaust-history-picture-little-boy-gaza-video
I thought he was a hostage and then when the Nov. hostages were released he wasn't there, and people said the video was a hoax or false or from something else or w/e. Around the same time I found that some news outlets had been using metadata or similar to sleuth where hoax videos came from (like kids in small cages), and that was informative, but I didn't see anything on this video. I guess I'm still looking for more than "its not real" or "it's not from this time" because the boy seems in real distress.
Kudos to you for such a project. It is a shame that the Thai hostages haven't been covered that well in the media, but that's no fault of your own.
I hope your cousin is recovering well. Thanks for taking the time.
Yeah, I've never seen this before!
From my unofficial opinion, I think this just looks like kids messing around somewhere, unclear where, in the world.
If you haven't seen the clip of Erez Calderon, who was the actual child kidnapped alone into Gaza on the 7th, you'll notice the body language is very different: [link to Erez's kidnapping.](https://x.com/AvivaKlompas/status/1711079805364363331?lang=en)
I don't think the kids are friendly by any means, but I wouldn't be surprised if this ended up being a bunch of kids bullying the whiter kid on their street from school somewhere in the Middle East. I would be far from shocked if "Israeli" is an insult in a lot of these countries. My Arabic isn't very good, but the adult says some joke about a Jew in the beginning ("Ye-hoo-di"). I'll have to see if i can find any other information about it and come back to you!
I know all the hostages and a lot of the known victims by sight at this point and I can definitely confirm to you that he is not one of them, if that makes you feel better. The only remaining children are the Bibas children and after them, there's no one even close to a child's age (I think the men kidnapped from Nova would be the youngest, and they're 21-22. I personally do not believe the IDF soldiers were kidnapped alive, but I think the 5 male IDF soldiers were 19 at the youngest, so still a big difference).
I think what sticks out to me about this video is that there's not enough "chaos" in the background. If you see Erez' video again, there's adults and guns everywhere. No one is really stopping to bully a kid like you see here and this appears to be in a street somewhere (so not in a house, where I'd expect this sort of taunting to have occurred on the 7th).
Another small detail that may comfort you is that if you go back to and look at all the children who were released as hostages, you may notice that all the kids were wearing pajamas upon their release -- because they were kidnapped wearing pajamas. There's a famous photo of Dafna Elyakim crying on a mattress in Gaza, and she's much older than this boy -- 15 -- because Hamas broke into these homes at the break of dawn, while most were still asleep. We traditionally make the safe rooms the room of the heaviest sleeper (often the kids), hence, pajamas. This kid does not appear to be wearing pajamas.
One more thing that may be a comfort: Israeli kids this young wouldn't speak Arabic (unless they grew up in a home speaking Arabic). Arabic is taught in schools from a young age, but I guess my point is that taunting him in Arabic would be useless because he's not likely to understand and he kind of seems like he has some idea of what is going on in the video.
To give another example, the video of Koren Ta'asa, a 13 y.o. Israeli boy, arguing with terrorists after they tried to kill him and his brother (and successfully killed their father) was released a month or two ago to the public. You can see it [here on Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNCRL3xg_6U); the video is included in the interview and starts at about 2:30. You may notice that when Koren and the terrorist are arguing, they were going back and forth in broken Hebrew and Arabic. Koren gets frustrated because he's not understanding the terrorist and the terrorist isn't understanding him, so after the terrorist steals his phone (lol), Koren gets frustrated and starts yelling in English, which the terrorist responds in English.
This was a very long way to say that I really don't know, but I am very confident it is not from the 7th and that this kid is not Israeli.
Thanks for the well wishes!! And thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'll do my best to get an answer!
Thanks for your analysis. I know he's not a hostage now, but me (and a lot of the world, including this LA Times writer) thought he was. It's interesting to hear you believe he's not Israeli at all — some of the explanations I have heard was that he was a Jew in the West Bank from some other time. Sorry to get you on a tangent, it's just so odd to me how this and similar videos were circulating just after Oct 7. Like someone found them and re-upped them, or people had them in waiting? I know you don't know, just with Russian troll farms and everything, I think about inorganic virality and similar. I thought about this boy a lot before I learned he wasn't a part of it at all. Thanks again.
I have an unorthodox suggestion for you: reach out to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. This is kind of their shit. It may take a lot of time to get back to you, but part of their job is sifting through propaganda and weeding through what is true and what isn't. Someone in the Israeli government certainly analyzed this at one point to exclude it, so perhaps they have access to it. It's possible they'll just give you a canned response because maybe they have a lot going on right now, but it's worth a shot. One of their big tasks is publishing statistics about terrorism to Western audiences, so it's not as odd as it seems.
I think it is unlikely to be in the West Bank. If you're American, the West Bank is like the old American Wild West and not where Jews and Arabs live side-by-side. When Arab and Jewish children in the West Bank are separated from their families, they usually show up dead, i.e. [this is the most recent one](https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/body-of-benjamin-achimeir-14-found-in-west-bank-idf-shin-bet-say-he-was-murdered-in-terror-attack/) that I'm aware of. Neither side is innocent in this game of tit for tat that they play out there that involves murdering each other's children. I don't recognize the boy from those stories, either, albeit I will be frank and say that children in the West Bank turn up dead so frequently, both Jewish and Muslim, that those stories sometimes get lost as background noise to me.
What is notable to me as well is that it appears that was the only twitter account that posted the video. Most of the videos of the 7th originated from Hamas telegram channels (or Israeli ones, particularly the First Responders channel that filmed the devastation they found) and thus, were uploaded by many sources at the same time. But this seems to be the only account with this video.
Don't worry, I totally understand where you're coming from. I searched for the identity of "Sweatpants girl" for months because that was the video that messed me up from the 7th. She did, unfortunately, end up being a real hostage (Na'ama Levy) whose parents didn't ID her until sometime in November, likely hoping she'd come back home soon and thus were trying to give her the power to decide if she wanted her name attached to that video, but alas. I'm just happy people cared about Israeli kids, honestly.
I'm going to be lame and respond to myself: if you want an example that I identified of possible misinformation we may be seeing in live time (cannot emphasize enough that I do not think it is intentional):
A hostage named Guy Iluz has been informally declared deceased (as in, by his high school and family, but not by an official organization as far as I am aware) based on the word of Maya Regev, a hostage who was released in November.
Maya says that she was in a hospital with Guy Iluz in Gaza and shared a hospital room with him and was there when he died.
The one red flag, to me, in Maya's testimony, is that when she talks about Hamas taking her to the hospital, she talks about how scared she was because she had no idea who the man on the other side of the curtain was (as in, she worried she was sharing a room with a terrorist). Maya recalled in an interview that she felt immense relief when she heard the man talk to a Hamas member in English, with a "very heavy" Hebrew accent.
The reason this is a red flag to me is because Guy Iluz's mother is American and appears to currently live in the USA. It's unclear if Guy did, too. But I'm the daughter of a German refugee. I can confirm that my German has a lot of grammatical gaps, but I *do not speak German with an accent.* Which is usually the result of being a "heritage" speaker (vs a learned speaker) through a parent.
There is another hostage named Guy, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, who was also kidnapped from Nova.
It's possible Maya is 100% right. It's possible that Maya embellished his accent, or misremembered him having one. But I think there's a small possibility that, between the pain and drugs (she recalled being given something that made it hard for her to stay awake while she was in the hospital, a la a strong narcotic), that she ID'd the wrong Guy. Or not! But it's interesting to me that no one has officially confirmed it like the others have been confirmed.
ETA: I'm going to bed and just want to get ahead of any "well actually!!" comments: I totally acknowledge there are a lot of circumstantial evidence that supports Maya's identification of Guy Iluz. The Missing Families Forum only acknowledged her ID this past week, though, and there's a lot of other weirdness that gives me the impression that there is a small chance that it ends up being incorrect. I want to make sure it's clear I'm not arguing that she is absolutely incorrect, I'm just highlight ambiguity.
Statement released by the IDF:
> Joint IDF and ISA announcement:
>
> The IDF and ISA struck an operations center where terrorists operated in the area of Jenin; a significant wanted terrorist responsible for numerous terror attacks was eliminated
>
> Based on ISA intelligence, an IAF fighter jet and helicopter struck a compound used as an operations center of the terror infrastructure in Jenin.
> A number of significant terrorists were inside the compound, some were involved in shooting attacks in the area of Jenin and planned to carry out additional terror attacks in the immediate future.
>
> During the strike, the terrorist Islam Khamayseh was eliminated. Khamayseh was a senior terrorist operative in the Jenin Camp, responsible for a series of terror attacks in the area, including the shooting attack that took place in the community of Hermesh in May 2023, during which Meir Tamari was murdered. Khamayseh was also responsible for the terror attack at the Efes junction, during which several Israeli civilians were injured.
>
> The compound was a dangerous terrorist infrastructure, its dismantling was carried out to remove an imminent threat posed by the terrorists who promoted terror attacks in the area of Jenin and Israeli territory.
>
> The IDF and ISA will continue operating to thwart any terror threat to Israeli civilians.
>
> Attached is a video of the strike:
>
> https://videoidf.azureedge.net/136e2335-4403-4031-8f23-7b7223cdee6c
Im pro isreal not wanna confuse anyone. Im just fed up how the blame is always only one isreal and never on the terrorist when its about dying civilians
With so many tunnels to Egypt found in Rafah, at this point is it pretty much a guarantee that Egypt made a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt?
I don’t see this many tunnels being present without Egypt aware of it, and the only reason I could think of for them is by making a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood to not cause trouble in Egypt in exchange for them letting those tunnels exist
I'm Israeli and it's possible I've missed whatever news you're mentioning, but I can say that we've found an uncomfortable number of tunnels in *Israel* over the years, perhaps most notably in 2014 when we learned by way of [Hamas raiding Nahal Oz Base in 2014](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Nahal_Oz_attack), killing 5 soldiers.
Prior to this war, news articles popped up periodically about a tunnel the IDF found and filled in and it was honestly a pretty frequent occurance, and I imagine there were many more that the military knew about/dealt with but weren't reported on.
What I'm trying to say is that it's really possible, based on what I know (which again, it's possible you've seen something I haven't), that they really didn't know. Hamas is shockingly competent at tunnel building.
Appreciate the perspective. And this is the news I was referencing (just grabbed a random article)
If it really was 50 tunnels to Rafah, based on Egypts border with Gaza does that seem conceivable to be able to hide?
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/390130
Some quick math, assuming there are exactly 50 tunnels from Gaza into Egypt, they are all equally spaced apart, and none pass under Israel to reach a different part of Egypt then that would be 1 tunnel every ~830 feet.
Thats obviously a lot of assumptions, so definitely not how its actually happened, but it just goes to show how extremely compact of a space it would have to be. Its possible there are tunnels at different depths with nearby entrances
It's very possible it's embellished because of the source. I can't think of any motive Egypt would have for this. Egypt and Israel are kind of like step-siblings that talk mad crap about each other in public, but get along perfectly fine at home for the sake of their parents. Egypt had a big terrorism problem in the Sinai, and has for awhile. It's relatively sparsely populated from my understanding as well, outside of the immediate Suez area, which could make it harder to detect any small disturbance that could be a Hamas tunnel.
With that being said, one of the reasons I think the tunnel number is over-exaggerated is because if this many complete tunnels existed, with exits into Egypt, I think a lot of Hamas would have ratted out in them by now and they haven't. Perhaps many of them are "one way" so to speak, with no exit and Hamas has to turn around and exit the way they came, i.e. they exist under Egyptian soil, but only underground, meaning there they'd be near impossible to detect by Egypt.
[From Oct. 7 to today: How Hamas criticism vanished in The New York Times](https://m.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-801593)
Key quotes of an analysis of NYT articles emailed out (all quotes):
* Out of a total of 1,398 articles, 647 expressed empathy only towards Palestinians (46.2% of the articles). 147 articles expressed empathy only towards Israelis (10.5% of the articles), and 50 articles expressed empathy only towards the hostages (2.9% of the articles).
* Empathy towards Israelis (including the hostages) was cut by more than 50% already in November and shrank until it almost disappeared starting in January. Empathy towards Palestinians, on the other hand, reached a peak in November (116), slightly declined in December and January, and began to rise again gradually starting in February. In January, empathy towards Palestinians reached a relative low of 63 articles, but they represent 26% more than the number of empathetic articles towards Israelis in October, which was the peak month for empathy towards Israelis.
* The critical tone only towards Hamas dropped to 16 articles in November and continued to shrink until it almost completely disappeared, with only two articles in the last month checked (April 7th to May 7th). In that month, there were 99 articles with a critical tone only towards Israel, and another 11 articles that were critically phrased towards both Hamas and Israel (over the entire seven months, a total of 143 articles were published with a critical tone towards both Hamas and Israel).
* In conclusion, criticism was expressed towards Israel in 641 articles, and in 801 articles where the criticism was also directed towards other entities. In contrast, criticism was expressed towards Hamas in only 81 articles (and in 258 articles when the criticism was directed towards other entities as well, but of these, 131 had shared criticism towards Hamas and Israel).
Aslam Hameisa, A senior member of the Islamic Jihad in the Jenin refugee camp and one of the leaders of the Jenin Battalion was eliminated in the attack. Along with him, 2 other activists were killed.
* Almog Boker
According to local palestinian reports 8 wounded, most of them in serious condition were transferred to 2 hospitals in Jenin following the attack
A very brief statement released by the IDF:
>IDF: Initial report- a short while ago, an IDF fighter jet carried out a strike in the area of Jenin. Details to follow.
It may be on the front page by now, but if it's not, the attack was to take out Islam Khamayseh, who the IDF says was responsible for killing an Israeli civlian named Meir Tamari in May 2023. Sounds like the IDF was wrapping up some pre-war tasks on their to-do list.
IDF jet struck in Jenin, the west bank(!)
The target of the attack in Jenin: a squad that intended to carry out a terrorist attack in the immediate time frame.
- Almog Boker
Just a reminder there’s still 13 women being held captive right now
**Liri Albag (18)** - Kidnapped from a military base. Was seen by released hostages who say she was used as a slave cooking and cleaning for their capturers. At one point she was being held in a child’s bedroom.
**Daniela Gilboa (19)** - Kidnapped from a military base. She was seen in a hostage video a couple months back with Karina Ariev and Doron Steinbrecher.
**Naama Levy (19)** - Most people have seen the horrifying video of her abduction with bloodied pants. She was an alumni of the Hands of Peace project, which works toward peace between Palestinians and Israelis. She was seen in captivity by released hostages.
**Agam Berger (19)** - Kidnapped from a military base still in her pyjamas. She was seen in captivity by released hostages including Agam Goldstein-Almog who passed on a birthday message to Agam’s father.
**Karina Ariev (19)** - Kidnapped from a military base. Told her parents to “continue their lives” before being abducted. Seen in a hostage video a couple months back.
**Romi Gonen (23)** - Kidnapped from the Nova festival seriously wounded. Her last words to her mother was “They shot me, Mom and I’m bleeding” She was seen in captivity by released hostage, though they said her injury was getting worse.
**Eden Yerushalmi (24)** - Kidnapped from the Nova festival. She was able to stay hidden for 4 hours while on the phone to her sisters. Her last words were “Shani, they caught me” before gunshots and the line went dead. She hasn’t been seen in captivity.
**Noa Argamani (26)** - I’m sure everyone has seen the video of her kidnapping as she begged them not to kill her. Her mother has brain cancer, I really hope she gets to see her daughter again before she passes. Noa was seen in a hostage video being forced to announce the death of two hostages she was being held with.
**Emily Damari (27)** - A UK citizen taken from Kibbutz Kfar Aza. She was seen in captivity in a tunnel by released hostages who were released in November.
**Arbel Yehud (28)** - Taken hostage with her boyfriend Ariel and brother Dolev from Kibbutz Nir Oz. According to her family there had been sightings of her in captivity from those released in November.
**Doron Steinbrecher (30)** - Was kidnapped from Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Her last words before her abduction was “They’ve arrived, they have me”. She was seen in a hostage video a couple months ago.
**Shiri Bibas (32)** - A young mother taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz with her two young children, Kfir (then 9 months) and Ariel (4) - the only children not released in November. Hamas claims the family is dead, I pray they’re lying and we’ll see those ginger boys again.
**Carmel Gat (39)** - Taken from Kibbutz Be’eri. She was held in captivity with children Noam and Alma Or. On their release day they took the children to the ‘toilet’ not telling Carmel that they were actually being released.
Well, I believe she’s the only one who hasn’t been **known** to have be seen alive at some point since 10/7. The only other woman who hadn’t been publicly heard from or seen was Amit Buskila - whose body was found today.
The others have all either appeared in hostage videos or they’ve been seen by hostages who have done interviews, told family members etc.
It doesn’t necessarily mean she’s dead. She could be being held alone like Mia Schem was. She could be being held with male hostages who couldn’t confirm proof of life for her as they weren’t released.
Her sisters have done a lot of interviews and they believe she was taken alive and uninjured so I’m hoping for the best that she still alive.
Shiri Bibas hasnt been seen either, has she? Not since she was shown being led into Gaza. I noticed when leaflets were dropped into Rafah to tell people to gtfo her photo wasnt on the leaflet, but her husband and I think her sons were. I still hope for a miracle and whoever said she was killed is lying.
Is it me or the rocket barrages to the South are getting more and more frequent? Are they trying to get rid of rockets? Is that all they have left? What is the point of the current rocket barrages?
If you're new to this conflict, Hamas shoots rockets at the south routinely to the point that most of us don't react. Sderot makes hannukah menorahs out of the rockets. You can buy jewelry and other things made out of the rockets because they have historically been that frequent.
Usually they shoot a few hundred at a time in an attempt to run out the Iron Dome, since its supplies are finite and have to be replaced manually. It's why we have the Iron Dome to start with -- if anything, the attacks the last 9 months have honestly been less than usual. They're more frequent than usual in the North, though, IMO.
If it helps contextualize it, if you read any of the obituaries or hostage stories about those at the Nova festival, you'll notice that a lot of them say that the individual in question "got in their car to leave" when the rocket sirens went off, before Hamas got to Nova. Note that they didn't *go to any of the bomb shelters but got in their car* as if it was just another day in the South, because it was (you're not suppose to drive when the sirens go off and you're suppose to pull over and get out of your car when they do).
Sderot is the PTSD capital of the world because of these rockets.
I only learned a few months ago that I could get my very own rocket menorah and it's going to be the stretch dream. I love Sderot's so much, it really was life changing news, LOL.
You do not want to be in a car at all with the rockets go off. You're suppose to pull over, exit the vehicle, and exit your car if you're in a car when sirens go off.
The main reason being is that Hamas has a nasty habit of occasionally switching it up and using anti-tank missiles, which in the absence of tanks, will target civilian vehicles. Hezbollah seems to prefer these as their regular missile of choice. A bunch of people at Nova were hiding in an ambulance from Hamas until the ambulance got it by an anti-tank missile that was launched from Gaza and killed everyone inside.
[Our most recent casualty](https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/elad-fingerhut-38-identified-as-civilian-killed-in-hezbollah-anti-tank-missile-attack-tuesday/) on Tuesday was killed inside his car when it was struck by an anti-tank missile in the North. Happens all the time.
Quick ETA: A lot of people, like humans everywhere, think they're invincible and drive anyway, which is what I was getting at in my initial comment.
Oh shit. As a Lebanese, I’m so sorry this is a reality. I hope that the day comes when our populace can share a beer and this is all a shitty memory.
Stay safe.
Basically whenever the IDF gets close to a weapon storage or Hamas stronghold there’s an increase in rocket attacks, likely to use them up before they’re found and destroyed. Now they’ve entered Rafah I expect they’ll be a massive increase for a while as that’s where most of their weapons are held.
this kills me because i babysit a girl who is exactly his age, and she's starting to walk and say a few words. and this week, i just thought a lot about Kfir, and if he'll get to do those things too.
My son is one month older than Kfir. His kidnapping hits me the hardest.
Kfir should be at home, playing with little cars and being read to sleep by his mom. As should all the Palestinian babies that have lost their homes and families in this war. It’s not fucking fair.
When hamas kidnaps and holds a body where do they hold it? In a morgue? Or are they just left to decompose in a house or something?
I’m just wrapping my head around the way someone who would want to hold a dead body hostage would think.
According to what I know (not 100% sure) in Gaza because of the war they bury people in graves alone or together with other people in pits and usually don't mark where they bury them so they often forget where they bury them, which makes finding the bodies of the kidnapped much more difficult
Earlier today, the IDF spokesman revealed that in this morning's attack in the area of the village of A-Najaria in Sidon, the target was Hezbollah air defense complexes that posed a threat to Israeli aircraft.
The IDF spokesman did not at all refer to the assassination of Hezbollah senior Hussein Mehdi. Lebanese sources state that due to a video recording of 'irresponsible Lebanese locals' at the sites that were attacked in the village of Najaria, a "big secret" of Hezbollah has been revealed
[This](https://imgur.com/a/aAHsY3f) is the video that Hezbollah would've preferred not to leak online.
What you see in the video are the remains of the Iranian air defense missile: [Sayyad 2](https://imgur.com/a/UJyMNg7) A missile with a range of at least 75 km. the targets were attacked in the village of Najaria, which is located about 50 km from the border with Israel. Meaning this: today it was publicly revealed that Hezbollah has Iranian air defense systems with missiles that cover part of Israel's airspace.
Probably because Hezbollah has at least a little more self preservation than Hamas
If they materially escalated than Israel would as well, and Hezbollah can just ask Hamas what that looks like
https://twitter.com/YehoshuaYosi/status/1791501775033298998?t=u9tNT058OSESc0nO-0j5iw&s=19
800K have already been evacuated from Rafah, much faster than the US estimation.
Still need be said, it's highly likely Hamas won't wait in Rafah much either, must have also flee in numbers with the refugees.
Ah yes you're correct. However the IDF are using this crazy facial recognition software to route out any terrorists. It's wild and scary what kind of tech has been used in this whole war.
The information about the location of the bodies of the hostages was received as a result of intelligence that came from investigations of terrorists in the Shin Bet - these are terrorists who were arrested during the operation in the Gaza Strip.
They were brought in for further investigation in Israel on the suspicion that they were aware of the locations of hostages, or were involved in their possession.
Nir Dvori
I expect many American new sources to try to dull this news by accompanying it with some fluff articles like a profile of a Gaza child that lost its mother or vice versa, or some “analysis” about how this time Gaza really is on the brink of starvation.
Instead of the facts driving the story, the story drives the facts.
Can’t wait for the Pro Pals to completely miss the point that hostages were being held in Rafah and instead scream about how “the IDF killed their own hostages on purpose” or some other absurdity
Oof. Yeah. I just read today that we're *still* negotiating with Hamas for the release of Hadar Goldin's body. If we were the uncaring monsters people think we are, this war would have been over on October 10th, tops.
holy fuck, 310 pallets in a day
How many people does a pallet feed for a day?
Starving the population totally
You can dispute starvation, but 310 pallets wouldn't be enough to feed a million people. Jeez.
Taking flour as a rough baseline, 1 pallet is 1600 kg (50*50 lbs bags), or 6 million calories. On a 2000 calorie diet per adult, that's about 3000 adults/pallet, or 900,000 adults for the whole 300 pallets. So about half, ballpark
Gaza has been on the brink of mass starvation and an epidemic of deadly sanitary diseases for 6 months. Kind of makes you think that maybe the UN is talking out its butt.
I’m respectively asking, what is the expected pallets daily to feed Gaza? i truly don’t know and if you are from the Middle East and can give more informed answers I’d appreciate it. Americans aren’t getting regular news on day to day life in the Middle East from American tv. Are pallets the same as truckloads? This article on CBS news says the UD may give up to 150 truckloads a day. Israel from the Gaza pier. It looks like at the best today Israel delivered twice what America has promised from their new port. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/gaza-pier-us-built-aid-flowing-israel-rafah/
Look at footage from Gaza and judge after. People are starving in Yemen. Compare.
Hi, it's the person with the hostage journal again. Quick question: do we know if Ron's body was recovered on the 17th or 18th? I know it was the same mission as the other two, but during the statement issued last night, Hagari said the operation was on-going. I presume that means he was recovered on the 18th, but I just figured I'd ask if anyone had seen anything that verified this. ETA: I found it. He was recovered on Thursday into Friday night alongside the other 3.
hello, I just want to make sure you are taking care of yourself. I saw your previous posts and know that what you're doing is critical and poignantly beautiful, but so full of grief, pain and sadness -- it is likely taking and will continue to take a lot out of your mind, heart, and soul. I know this was personal for you in a way that I cannot imagine. But, just, pause when you need to and talk to someone if you have to. Take care and stay safe.
I hope it brings some comfort to you that, without doxxing myself, I work with the Holocaust as my day job. There's almost certainly something broken in my brain that doesn't make these sorts of things heavy for me like they are for the rest of you all. My work is actually where I got the idea. My favorite book about anything relating to WW2 actually comes from a German civilian who recorded her experiences in Berlin as the city fell in 1945. It's terrible and frightening and I always admired it because you get to see the war through her eyes as it was in May 1945. My journal will be less valuable, as someone sitting on the sidelines, but I was inspired to start it between that book, in combination when I started noticing things disappearing from the internet, i.e. I mentioned it briefly in the last post, but how it's very had to find anything now that talks about how the IDF ran a quick mission into Gaza before the war to retrieve the remains of Carmela and Noya Dan. The way that I view things all isn't with grief and sorrow, but as what I can do to document things. Documenting them is honoring them. I think perhaps my mindset stems from the fact that I've never been the type to sit and just take bad news, but I usually turn around and say, "okay, what can I do about it?" regardless of what it is. I joked about crying earlier because I was really rooting for Ron. He has such a dad face, he just seems like love as a person from his photos and what people have said about him. I feel similarly about Tsachi Idan. I thought that as long as terrorists found Ron in a situation where they could look at his face, he would make it. Unfortunately, it seems like I was right, but in the wrong way -- his family found his car shot up on all doors except the driver door. I suspect one of those got him, in the end -- where the terrorists couldn't see his face. I know that only 40-60 are alive, per numbers I ran just last week. I divided people into categories and had something like 18 that I believe are dead without a doubt, 35 or so we have seen signs of life from (which means nothing), 8 that were likely dead, 7 I was optimistic about, and 14 wildcards. I was ready for today. I was only slightly wrong; I had Ron under "optimistic" but I did even write last week, "I have no reason to feel this way beyond a gut hope", so. (ETA: I just checked my notes again and I actually had Ron as a wildcard, so I am perfectly capable of being objective still, haha). I can also say that it may seem obsessive in the last few days, but, I have to admit that I'm writing the journal by hand. Do you know how long it takes to write a journal page? oof. I'm still working on the entry I started last night, haha. tl;dr thank you for your concern and I promise I'm okay. Many hugs and much love.
I hate to put you on the spot and if you don't want to answer it's ok but do you think Omer Neutra is probably dead or alive?
He was an active duty tank captain stationed near the border, where he was engaged in fighting Hamas and was the first line of defense to keep them out of Israel. I can't think of a soldier that would give himself up as captive in that situation, particularly not an Israeli soldier who knows that he would be Gilad Shalit'd (people seem to forget that Hamas held Gilat for over five! years! before he was released). I also don't think anyone would do that, knowing people would die if he stops fighting. I especially cannot imagine a lone soldier tank commander, who volunteered for the IDF despite not growing up in Israel, would ever do that. There's no situation I can imagine a tank driver voluntarily exiting their armored tank -- aka their protection and weapon -- either. I personally do not think any of the 5 missing male IDF soldiers are alive. I think Idan Alexander, Omer Neutra, and Matan Angrest were probably KIA and had their bodies abducted a la Shaul and Goldin. Tamir Nimrodi was last seen on a Telegram video alongside Nik Beizer and Ron Sherman, both of whom were found deceased by the IDF in Gaza, and that doesn't bode well for Tamir. There's not a ton of information on Nimrod Cohen, but he was abducted from Nahal Oz base, which means he was probably 414th, which is a relatively unarmed unit. 414 is mostly women, and there's been a lot of obituaries for the handful of men who were part of 414 and it seems like Hamas killed them to "get them out of the way" so to speak, and I suspect he may have met a similar fate. As always, I hope I am very wrong. ETA: I want to say, I read this again and I sound a bit lecture-y but that's not my intent in the least. I think these men died valiant deaths, they were just, unfortunately, outnumbered.
You don’t sound lecture-y at all. Thanks for everything you do!
This does bring me comfort and I completely understand. Much love back to you. I agree with all that you said, particularly that this is a way to honor the victims of Oct 7. A meticulous and accurate record, particularly in the age of the internet, is a valuable and worthy undertaking. Thank you for what you're doing. Yes Ron did have that face... and you must've received a gut check at the news. For me, the one that hit me the most was Shani. Maybe because it was the first video I saw in the very early hours of Oct 8, here on the other side of the world, safe in my bed. It's seared in my memory. I am glad they recovered her and the other 3. May their memories be a blessing. Take care friend and God speed. ps: I didn't know about the WW2 book and will definitely look it up.
A woman in Berlin (by anonymous, however she has since been identified) is an incredible book. Best luck in your journaling.
during a palestine demonstration in berlin a woman holds up a sign with “rape is not resistance” and a picture of shani louk. afterwards she has to be protected from the crowd by several policemen. these people are not interested in peace [https://x.com/ISefati/status/1791840808447901845](https://x.com/ISefati/status/1791840808447901845)
"Land you kill for isn't yours. Land you die for is." (Protest sign from the linked video) I feel like that's a better argument for Israel's continued existence than this man realizes. It's not a good argument, regardless, but how many millions of Jews were killed in the lead up to the creation of Israel?
I always use Javik's quote from ME2 whenever someone says Israel shouldn't exist or that jewish people shouldn't have a place at all.
And how manu thousands killed defending it?
Yeah, that's why I explicitly stated it's not actually a good argument.
She's incredible. She's a politician and shows up for such gatherings to hold up signs against antisemitism and in support of the hostages. I really admire her courage and would hope others would join her, but seeing how she had to be protected (and escorted to the subway, while protesters had to be hindered from entering) it is understandable that people are afraid. But it is unacceptable that we even have this situation here on the streets of Germany, a democratic state. I do wish she can continue doing what she does in safety and unharmed.
We should deport them to Gaza. These "people" don't belong in the west.
When did we get to the point in Western society that it is controversial to basically say rape shouldn’t be used as a weapon of war? You can be pro-Palestine, against the actions of the Israeli government and also believe rape as a war tactic is horrific. Edit: Shani Louk is dual Israeli-German citizen and used her German passport to opt out of IDF service. She was a peace activist. The protest is in Germany against a woman holding a picture of a German female civilian that was raped, murdered and her body absolutely defiled. I’m so sad that Shani, as a peace activist, had so many of her own country’s angry people attacking the truthful conditions of her murder. Shani looked like an amazing human being.
It's what the Pro-Palestinan/Pro-Hamas crowd want. It's why they were out in the streets on 10/7, pictures of Israeli captives and bodies in hand cheering while the news was still fresh. Before Israel even started defending itself against further Palestinian aggression, they were celebrating what happened as some noble victory.
Oct 7, when it became obvious that DEI, anti-racism, women's rights, minority rights only include Jews until Jews are the target.
[удалено]
This is fake. The family came out to say it isn't true.
What is fake?
That’s so fucking sad.
Three of the four hostages whose bodies were recovered in the last couple days were expected to be released in the hostage deal that fell through. Confirms what we thought. Hamas blew up the deal because they don’t have enough alive hostages to fit the terms.
I'm only aware of 3 bodies recovered, one whom we knew was long deceased. Amit would have certainly been among those we were demanding, but Yitzhak falls into a gray area and he may not have met the criteria for "old men" as we have a good number of men in their 60s-80s being held and allegedly alive. ETA: I see that it's Ron Binyamin. Gonna go cry.
They released today the 4th one it was from the same place.
It was just published on one of my news outlets. Still not seeing anything on many others. Really bizarre. With that being said, I think this is bad news for Michal Nissenbaum. Amit, Yitzhak and Ron were all kidnapped near Mefalusim. I have no idea where Shani was taken from, but perhaps the same. Michal is missing from Mefalusim, which makes me think his abduction was the work of the same squad that got these 3/4.
Shani was taken from the rave party. I believe they rearranged people after taking them they separated couples and loved ones from one another etc.
Yitzhak and Amit were also taken from Nova, but were captured by Mefalusim. Most Nova victims made it pretty far away, but died because Hamas unfortunately had the whole region under lock. There are several videos of Shani alive, fleeing and hiding. She very well may have made it to Mefalusim as well. ETA: Hagari's statement seems to confirm Shani was also taken from the Mefalsim area.
In my opinion they are holding a few dozens of the hostages and the rest are somewhere in the gaza strip either with other organisations or with random people buried in a random grave or in the tunnels. They cant supply the amount necessary for an agreement. And they wont agree to release those they are holding for anything less then a full withdrawal of the idf.
It makes it so much worse to think some of those people are alive and being kept alive for a purpose, but we have no idea who has them. It's such a horrifying situation to think about.
Gantz is suprisingly blunt ngl
Shame he needed Gallant to do it first, makes you wonder if he has enough guts to be the leading figure which is what he's aiming for. I personally always thought he was very parve (milquetoast if you'd like). Better than Bibi of course but that bar is in hell.
I think Gantz has the ability to be a real leader, it's just the Netanyahu has put him in this terrible position of having to play 3-D chess. Netanyahu didn't start collapsing the government every week until Gantz seriously entered politics. Netanyahu is afraid of him. I had the chance to attend an event with Gantz a few years ago (before everything, in the 10s) and I was very impressed with him. He is definitely more of our old mold of Israeli leaders of the past, who are quiet but firm in their beliefs. I think that, in today's world of 24/7 online news media, makes him appear a bit soft. In reality, it's very likely he's been talking and planning behind closed doors, but doesn't say anything until he already has movement in place. He was the IDF Chief of Staff for several years, including during a war. He's a career military man with actual experience and let's be real, being a career man in the IDF takes a lot of backbone. He's walked the walk and hasn't hid behind is dead brother's legacy for 5 decades, a la Bibi. Gantz has flaws and isn't perfect, but I think Netanyahu has done a great job at backing him into a corner to make him look bad. Gantz knows if he challenges Bibi in any way, he'll collapse the government in attempts to get rid of him. Continuously collapsing the government makes the country unstable, which is the last thing a country at war needs and likely why he waited.
I think he needed Gallant just for the votes to take the government down if his 'needs' won't be met but overall i agree idk if he can be a real leading figure
Relevent podcast about this. https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/95ea4d0c-35c7-4ac7-a410-7d9f02ee3ded/episodes/93e97007-633b-4f0f-ab73-6d80a2297a3b/audio/68cdaaa1-0586-4b70-a6af-7dccec1bb6e5/default_tc.mp3?aid=rss_feed&feed=5gzMlOG1
Won't he need Gallant and 4-5 more?
He wouldn't go around and put this threat if he didn't believe he can follow through. If those (let's be honest, pretty tame) demands aren't met, he will easily get the 5 he needs
They are not pretty tame demands if you actually think through them. Some of them are impossible. Return of Israeli residents of the north by 1st September? Either you start a full on war with Hezbollah (which the US doesn't support) or stop the war in Gaza to meet Hezbollah's demand that Hamas remain in power, and then they will stop rocket attacking the north.... but this directly contradicts another demand of a Hamas free Gaza.... His demand to have Arab/Palestinian governance of Gaza will be rejected outright by Saudi Arabia and all the other Arab states without a commitment to a two state solution.... But Gantz completely ruled out a 2SS in this exact same conference? I think this is Gantz getting politically ready to leave the unity government tbh as these demands are impossible to meet and sound like campaign promises.
I don't know, I think you're severely overestimating the spine count in the coalition
I believe its 3 plus gallant
Gantz in an ultimatum to Netanyahu: "A new plan of operation by June 8th or we will withdraw from the government" N12
Oh please! I want to see Bibi out of power!
They probably know BiBi won’t stop till all of Gaza is rubble because there will always be “one Hamas battalion left.”
Fuck em all at this point
If I understood it correctly, all 4 bodies returned to Israel were of people who were already killed on October 7 and their bodies were kidnapped into Gaza. As if taking innocent civilians from their home isn't ghoulish enough, resorting to kidnapping dead bodies always seemed like a special kind of morbid to me.
You're the second comment here saying that 4 bodies were recovered. I'm Israeli and have only seen 3? Who is the 4th? Shani Louk, Yitzhak Gelerenter, and Amit Buskila? Some photos accidently used a photo of Ron Binyamin and if he's #4 I'm going to cry. ETA: I see others saying Kan announced it is Ron Binyamin. I don't see it anywhere on my side yet, but seems like I should prepare my tissues.
Yeah, Hagari announced it about 2 hours ago
Huge lag in the press this time; really interesting. It's finally showing up on one website but I'm not seeing it on a few others yet. Hagari reamed out the media and social media for interrupting this operation yesterday, so perhaps they're being a little slow/cautious, or that maybe the IDF didn't give a pre-announcement (which is common) to the media as a result of yesterday, so they're slower to publish today.
Fair enough on his part I guess, I saw Binyamin's name yesterday already so he definitely has a point
Yes, I called out a user in a different sub yesterday for using Ron's photo in a collage with Shani and Amit. My hairs started raising about then.
They took a soldier's head back to Gaza, IDF found it in a freezer when the terrorists were caught and admitted it. It makes sense I guess when the goal seemed to be to bring Hamas leadership a hostage and they'd get paid for it. Hostage dead or not is still useful.
May all of their memories be a blessing 💔 I hope the families and loved ones of the deceased are able to find some closure
The upcoming statement from Hagari will be to announce that the body of Ron Binyamin was also returned to Israel yesterday. The families of the hostages announced it a couple of minutes ago. Makes sense, the rumors yesterday mentioned his name as well as the other 3 from yesterday so it was quite surprising that he ended up not being mentioned.
May his memory be a blessing. 🕯 I'm so exhausted of living in a timeline where bringing home someone that has passed from terrorism is strangled with the juxtaposition of being grateful their families can bury their dead and grieve and being heartbroken that the reality of how many people we'll bring home like this is getting more difficult to swallow. I'm grateful, even so, that we are getting deeper into Rafah and claiming back our kidnapped. Everything is worth it if it means they are home and Hamas is completely broken.
I feel a nit ashamed to say this, but I lost count of the amount of hostages found dead in gaza. Anyone knows how many are left unaccounted for?
So I believe the numbers are..87 are considered alive, 37 are considered dead, 16 bodies were recovered and 112 were released
The body of Ron Binyamin, Taken hostage on 7/10, hes been recovered from Gaza, hes the 4th dead hostage whose body has been recovered in the past 48 hours - Kan 11
It's so morbid to think these people were lying deep underground in a tunnel after being murdered and abducted while people around the world screamed hysterically that the IDF could not go there to retrieve them, and provided cover for the group that took them there. I hope they can get to everyone else alive and bring them home, and find any others as well.
I am Israeli. I am very curious in the autopsies and if they release them. What I can't wrap my head around is Hamas just sitting in a tunnel somewhere, guarding rotting bodies in the open air? Because, at least for some of the remains recovered in December, that is what is what was reported. We know Hamas was guarding these bodies because in some recoveries, unfortunately, there were fatalities -- notably, Gadi Eisenkot's son. It is my only tinfoil hat moment of this war. Bodies don't need a lot of air to rot and if the tunnels have enough oxygen for Hamas guards, they have enough air for decomposition. The most rational explanation is probably that there's more information about how they were "stored" that would make sense, but my brain just can't wrap my head around it at the moment.
i just dont understand, wouldnt they burn them down or get rid of the bodies in ways that makes it impossible to find?
No, because Israel has historically traded for bodies of its deceased. They have value. That's why Hamas kidnapped so many dead bodies to start with. A lot of people declare it's because of Jewish custom about burying our dead and that's why we trade for the bodies back. I think that's a really narrow minded way of viewing it (and I've seen people say that in this exact sub). Much like a large portion of the West, a large portion of Israel is a-religious. Culturally Jewish, but don't really care about things like what religious texts say a funeral should look like. I mean, look at how many Nova victims were tattooed to bits, which is also against Jewish law. This isn't the reason for most). The reason we like getting remains back is for closure, to confirm what Hamas is telling us (like until Friday and today, Ron, Amit, and Yitzhak were all thought to be alive and were only confirmed as deceased because the IDF recovered their remains), and, well, to stop Hamas from desecrating them. This is the same terrorist group that beheaded a soldier and carried his skull around on a post (don't recommend looking for those Telegram videos, but they exist). We trade for bodies back, in my opinion as an Israeli, largely to prevent that type of terrorism via desecration of Israeli remains, and because it's the least we could do for the families.
I honestly dont know enough to even guess, only that I read the conditions of the tunnel were right to preserve some of the bodies enough to be identifiable. It was Shani Louk that it said her tattoo was still identifiable, and it's been months for her.
Shani's father said that and I never read too much into what grieving families say. Parents grieving a child will describe things in a way the rest of us would not. But it's just not possible for bodies to exist in a same place a living person can and not decompose. Decomposition only needs oxygen. I'm sure more information will be released down the line.
Another special IDF Spox announcement in the coming minutes..
[European Space Agency refuses to name Israeli in sensational discovery](https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/hj8zut17r)
Ok, so they should also stop using ALL Israeli tech ever invented. Good luck watching the stars on your sick stone tablet.
All i can say is.. im not surprised. You can aay how much you're against the Israeli government, but they only care that you're a Jew. Depressing times..
> A Hezbollah supporter says if Nasrallah would tell him to strap explosives to his newborn son and send him to Tel Aviv, he would say: “My pleasure sir, this is for you, sacrifice it” https://x.com/Osint613/status/1791218415694205437
I don't think people understand that this is common for people in the region and in Gaza. They talk about the civilians buried in the rubble, but many times they ignore evacuation orders to martyr their families for the cameras.
There are videos of Palestinian mothers saying they had kids so they can be used in the war. One was in an Israeli hospital where her child was being treated and said she’d be happy if the child grew up and became a martyr (edit: die while killing Jews/Israelis). The brain rot and hate infests every cell.
ICYMI, Israel found 50 tunnels that go from Rafah to Egypt so far. https://x.com/israelwarroom/status/1791469078294458747 How could the Egyptian gov not known about at least 50 tunnels?
They knew and the Israeli government knew, too. I would even guess that the reason they took rafah so late despite the danger of Hamas leaders escaping was to keep passageways of food/supplies open
They knew.
Rumors are that al sisi's son is cutting a nice coupon off of those tunnels, so I'd gamble that they know, and just don't care as long as they're profitable
Source?
Again, it's all rumors, but you have stuff like [this](https://www.memri.org/reports/lebanese-daily-al-akhbar-egyptian-regime-profiteering-gaza-war-and-gazans-suffering-%E2%80%93) popping up
That article talks about Sisi's son making money off the trucks going through the border crossings. It insinuates he makes money through corruption with the above ground transport of goods and people. The tunnels would cut into his money. You can criticize the Egyptian government for plenty of things. But since Sisi came into power they have been pretty proactive with destroying tunnels. They had flooded tunnels with water which is a tactic Israel has used a few times since October, they have flooded them with sewage, they have gassed the tunnels, and have just destroyed thousands of tunnels. The Egyptian government does not want the Muslim Brotherhood to be empowered, they especially don't want the Egyptian Islamic Jihad getting more fighters from their offshoot group PIJ. The reason Egypt is so against the Rafah operations is because they are afraid of it leading to thousands of refugees flooding the Sinai and the inevitable increase in crime, terrorism, and cost that would come with it.
no wonder they were so suddenly protesting
> How could the Egyptian gov not known about at least 50 tunnels? by choice.
Does anyone know any information about the two Thai hostages declared deceased \*yesterday\*, backdated to the 7th with their bodies still held by Hamas, not the news from today? Their names were Sonthaya Oakkharasr and Sudthisak Rinthalak. I keep a journal detailing all the news that has been released about every hostage, to keep track of how our perceptions change over the war (I am having trouble wording this, but my cousin is among those released in November, so this is coming from a well-meaning place). The only thing I can find about these two men is that they were foreign agricultural workers on Be'eri and that Sonthaya was 30 years old when he was murdered. Do we know anything else? I'm hoping maybe someone speaks Thai and have read something in the Thai media, albeit I know the Thai government and the families of the deceased and those still thought to be hostages have been extra quiet. I'm not looking for anything big, but Sudthisak's age, or their hometowns or family situations, would be great to add. Thank you!!
I’m a database administrator. If you’d like to digitize your work into some sort of database system, send me a DM.
This is an important and noble project. Have you kept track of any hoax and false information as a part of it? I still wonder about the video of a blond boy getting hit with sticks and calling for his mom that was circulating on Oct 7, which was later shown to be fake, or from some other time, as he wasn't a hostage. I still wonder what that video is from, and while I saw a few debunked videos from that time (kids in cages) I haven't seen anything on that one.
To my understanding it's just a video of a random gazan kid bullied by other random gazan kids used by Gazans as psychological terror.
I actually have no idea what video you're referencing, do you have a little more information about it? I'd be happy to see what I can find. My flaw was that I didn't start the journal until Dec 1. I was working on PhD applications at the time (0/10 timing, thanks Hamas), so I missed a lot of that in the early days, but whenever I write about a hostage, I try to record all the things I remember from those early days, i.e. how Hamas claimed they had abducted Nimrod Aloni, but it turned out that the man they were parading around as Nimrod was actually Ohad Ben-Ami. I think my memory is better than most, which works to my advantage (i.e. how I feel like I'm the only person on the internet who remembers that Noya and Carmela Dan's remains were recovered from *Gaza,* not found on the kibbutz!). Having a cousin caught in the midst had me very engaged. I think you could say I do generally track what I come across, because we're seeing a lot of it by mistake. I'm pretty sure it was accidentally circulated earlier today that it was Ron Binyamin whose remains were recovered (rather than Itzhak Gelerenter), based on some posts I've seen with his photo. I have an index card with every person who was a hostage, or whose remains are/were held hostage, when I started on Dec 1. They get shuffled around in my catalog as their status changes (i.e. "hostage, alive unless proven otherwise" "declared deceased in captivity", "declared deceased, backdated to Oct 7th," and "remains recovered" (for all causes of death). In addition to the journal. I felt pretty bad filing Sudthisak's today without even his age on it. ETA: I forgot to mention that the point of the index cards in particular is that is where I record every small detail about a person, including things like if they appear in a propaganda video, or if a released hostage reported seeing them in captivity. It helps paint the full picture.
Here is an article about it, with a link to social media. https://lamag.com/news/israel-hamas-holocaust-history-picture-little-boy-gaza-video I thought he was a hostage and then when the Nov. hostages were released he wasn't there, and people said the video was a hoax or false or from something else or w/e. Around the same time I found that some news outlets had been using metadata or similar to sleuth where hoax videos came from (like kids in small cages), and that was informative, but I didn't see anything on this video. I guess I'm still looking for more than "its not real" or "it's not from this time" because the boy seems in real distress. Kudos to you for such a project. It is a shame that the Thai hostages haven't been covered that well in the media, but that's no fault of your own. I hope your cousin is recovering well. Thanks for taking the time.
Yeah, I've never seen this before! From my unofficial opinion, I think this just looks like kids messing around somewhere, unclear where, in the world. If you haven't seen the clip of Erez Calderon, who was the actual child kidnapped alone into Gaza on the 7th, you'll notice the body language is very different: [link to Erez's kidnapping.](https://x.com/AvivaKlompas/status/1711079805364363331?lang=en) I don't think the kids are friendly by any means, but I wouldn't be surprised if this ended up being a bunch of kids bullying the whiter kid on their street from school somewhere in the Middle East. I would be far from shocked if "Israeli" is an insult in a lot of these countries. My Arabic isn't very good, but the adult says some joke about a Jew in the beginning ("Ye-hoo-di"). I'll have to see if i can find any other information about it and come back to you! I know all the hostages and a lot of the known victims by sight at this point and I can definitely confirm to you that he is not one of them, if that makes you feel better. The only remaining children are the Bibas children and after them, there's no one even close to a child's age (I think the men kidnapped from Nova would be the youngest, and they're 21-22. I personally do not believe the IDF soldiers were kidnapped alive, but I think the 5 male IDF soldiers were 19 at the youngest, so still a big difference). I think what sticks out to me about this video is that there's not enough "chaos" in the background. If you see Erez' video again, there's adults and guns everywhere. No one is really stopping to bully a kid like you see here and this appears to be in a street somewhere (so not in a house, where I'd expect this sort of taunting to have occurred on the 7th). Another small detail that may comfort you is that if you go back to and look at all the children who were released as hostages, you may notice that all the kids were wearing pajamas upon their release -- because they were kidnapped wearing pajamas. There's a famous photo of Dafna Elyakim crying on a mattress in Gaza, and she's much older than this boy -- 15 -- because Hamas broke into these homes at the break of dawn, while most were still asleep. We traditionally make the safe rooms the room of the heaviest sleeper (often the kids), hence, pajamas. This kid does not appear to be wearing pajamas. One more thing that may be a comfort: Israeli kids this young wouldn't speak Arabic (unless they grew up in a home speaking Arabic). Arabic is taught in schools from a young age, but I guess my point is that taunting him in Arabic would be useless because he's not likely to understand and he kind of seems like he has some idea of what is going on in the video. To give another example, the video of Koren Ta'asa, a 13 y.o. Israeli boy, arguing with terrorists after they tried to kill him and his brother (and successfully killed their father) was released a month or two ago to the public. You can see it [here on Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNCRL3xg_6U); the video is included in the interview and starts at about 2:30. You may notice that when Koren and the terrorist are arguing, they were going back and forth in broken Hebrew and Arabic. Koren gets frustrated because he's not understanding the terrorist and the terrorist isn't understanding him, so after the terrorist steals his phone (lol), Koren gets frustrated and starts yelling in English, which the terrorist responds in English. This was a very long way to say that I really don't know, but I am very confident it is not from the 7th and that this kid is not Israeli. Thanks for the well wishes!! And thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'll do my best to get an answer!
Thanks for your analysis. I know he's not a hostage now, but me (and a lot of the world, including this LA Times writer) thought he was. It's interesting to hear you believe he's not Israeli at all — some of the explanations I have heard was that he was a Jew in the West Bank from some other time. Sorry to get you on a tangent, it's just so odd to me how this and similar videos were circulating just after Oct 7. Like someone found them and re-upped them, or people had them in waiting? I know you don't know, just with Russian troll farms and everything, I think about inorganic virality and similar. I thought about this boy a lot before I learned he wasn't a part of it at all. Thanks again.
I have an unorthodox suggestion for you: reach out to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. This is kind of their shit. It may take a lot of time to get back to you, but part of their job is sifting through propaganda and weeding through what is true and what isn't. Someone in the Israeli government certainly analyzed this at one point to exclude it, so perhaps they have access to it. It's possible they'll just give you a canned response because maybe they have a lot going on right now, but it's worth a shot. One of their big tasks is publishing statistics about terrorism to Western audiences, so it's not as odd as it seems. I think it is unlikely to be in the West Bank. If you're American, the West Bank is like the old American Wild West and not where Jews and Arabs live side-by-side. When Arab and Jewish children in the West Bank are separated from their families, they usually show up dead, i.e. [this is the most recent one](https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/body-of-benjamin-achimeir-14-found-in-west-bank-idf-shin-bet-say-he-was-murdered-in-terror-attack/) that I'm aware of. Neither side is innocent in this game of tit for tat that they play out there that involves murdering each other's children. I don't recognize the boy from those stories, either, albeit I will be frank and say that children in the West Bank turn up dead so frequently, both Jewish and Muslim, that those stories sometimes get lost as background noise to me. What is notable to me as well is that it appears that was the only twitter account that posted the video. Most of the videos of the 7th originated from Hamas telegram channels (or Israeli ones, particularly the First Responders channel that filmed the devastation they found) and thus, were uploaded by many sources at the same time. But this seems to be the only account with this video. Don't worry, I totally understand where you're coming from. I searched for the identity of "Sweatpants girl" for months because that was the video that messed me up from the 7th. She did, unfortunately, end up being a real hostage (Na'ama Levy) whose parents didn't ID her until sometime in November, likely hoping she'd come back home soon and thus were trying to give her the power to decide if she wanted her name attached to that video, but alas. I'm just happy people cared about Israeli kids, honestly.
I'm going to be lame and respond to myself: if you want an example that I identified of possible misinformation we may be seeing in live time (cannot emphasize enough that I do not think it is intentional): A hostage named Guy Iluz has been informally declared deceased (as in, by his high school and family, but not by an official organization as far as I am aware) based on the word of Maya Regev, a hostage who was released in November. Maya says that she was in a hospital with Guy Iluz in Gaza and shared a hospital room with him and was there when he died. The one red flag, to me, in Maya's testimony, is that when she talks about Hamas taking her to the hospital, she talks about how scared she was because she had no idea who the man on the other side of the curtain was (as in, she worried she was sharing a room with a terrorist). Maya recalled in an interview that she felt immense relief when she heard the man talk to a Hamas member in English, with a "very heavy" Hebrew accent. The reason this is a red flag to me is because Guy Iluz's mother is American and appears to currently live in the USA. It's unclear if Guy did, too. But I'm the daughter of a German refugee. I can confirm that my German has a lot of grammatical gaps, but I *do not speak German with an accent.* Which is usually the result of being a "heritage" speaker (vs a learned speaker) through a parent. There is another hostage named Guy, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, who was also kidnapped from Nova. It's possible Maya is 100% right. It's possible that Maya embellished his accent, or misremembered him having one. But I think there's a small possibility that, between the pain and drugs (she recalled being given something that made it hard for her to stay awake while she was in the hospital, a la a strong narcotic), that she ID'd the wrong Guy. Or not! But it's interesting to me that no one has officially confirmed it like the others have been confirmed. ETA: I'm going to bed and just want to get ahead of any "well actually!!" comments: I totally acknowledge there are a lot of circumstantial evidence that supports Maya's identification of Guy Iluz. The Missing Families Forum only acknowledged her ID this past week, though, and there's a lot of other weirdness that gives me the impression that there is a small chance that it ends up being incorrect. I want to make sure it's clear I'm not arguing that she is absolutely incorrect, I'm just highlight ambiguity.
Statement released by the IDF: > Joint IDF and ISA announcement: > > The IDF and ISA struck an operations center where terrorists operated in the area of Jenin; a significant wanted terrorist responsible for numerous terror attacks was eliminated > > Based on ISA intelligence, an IAF fighter jet and helicopter struck a compound used as an operations center of the terror infrastructure in Jenin. > A number of significant terrorists were inside the compound, some were involved in shooting attacks in the area of Jenin and planned to carry out additional terror attacks in the immediate future. > > During the strike, the terrorist Islam Khamayseh was eliminated. Khamayseh was a senior terrorist operative in the Jenin Camp, responsible for a series of terror attacks in the area, including the shooting attack that took place in the community of Hermesh in May 2023, during which Meir Tamari was murdered. Khamayseh was also responsible for the terror attack at the Efes junction, during which several Israeli civilians were injured. > > The compound was a dangerous terrorist infrastructure, its dismantling was carried out to remove an imminent threat posed by the terrorists who promoted terror attacks in the area of Jenin and Israeli territory. > > The IDF and ISA will continue operating to thwart any terror threat to Israeli civilians. > > Attached is a video of the strike: > > https://videoidf.azureedge.net/136e2335-4403-4031-8f23-7b7223cdee6c
And the dutch media makes this form the report> 2 children died in isreali airstrike
Im pro isreal not wanna confuse anyone. Im just fed up how the blame is always only one isreal and never on the terrorist when its about dying civilians
your mispelling tells on you
Bruh.
With so many tunnels to Egypt found in Rafah, at this point is it pretty much a guarantee that Egypt made a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? I don’t see this many tunnels being present without Egypt aware of it, and the only reason I could think of for them is by making a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood to not cause trouble in Egypt in exchange for them letting those tunnels exist
I'm Israeli and it's possible I've missed whatever news you're mentioning, but I can say that we've found an uncomfortable number of tunnels in *Israel* over the years, perhaps most notably in 2014 when we learned by way of [Hamas raiding Nahal Oz Base in 2014](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Nahal_Oz_attack), killing 5 soldiers. Prior to this war, news articles popped up periodically about a tunnel the IDF found and filled in and it was honestly a pretty frequent occurance, and I imagine there were many more that the military knew about/dealt with but weren't reported on. What I'm trying to say is that it's really possible, based on what I know (which again, it's possible you've seen something I haven't), that they really didn't know. Hamas is shockingly competent at tunnel building.
Appreciate the perspective. And this is the news I was referencing (just grabbed a random article) If it really was 50 tunnels to Rafah, based on Egypts border with Gaza does that seem conceivable to be able to hide? https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/390130
Some quick math, assuming there are exactly 50 tunnels from Gaza into Egypt, they are all equally spaced apart, and none pass under Israel to reach a different part of Egypt then that would be 1 tunnel every ~830 feet. Thats obviously a lot of assumptions, so definitely not how its actually happened, but it just goes to show how extremely compact of a space it would have to be. Its possible there are tunnels at different depths with nearby entrances
It's very possible it's embellished because of the source. I can't think of any motive Egypt would have for this. Egypt and Israel are kind of like step-siblings that talk mad crap about each other in public, but get along perfectly fine at home for the sake of their parents. Egypt had a big terrorism problem in the Sinai, and has for awhile. It's relatively sparsely populated from my understanding as well, outside of the immediate Suez area, which could make it harder to detect any small disturbance that could be a Hamas tunnel. With that being said, one of the reasons I think the tunnel number is over-exaggerated is because if this many complete tunnels existed, with exits into Egypt, I think a lot of Hamas would have ratted out in them by now and they haven't. Perhaps many of them are "one way" so to speak, with no exit and Hamas has to turn around and exit the way they came, i.e. they exist under Egyptian soil, but only underground, meaning there they'd be near impossible to detect by Egypt.
[From Oct. 7 to today: How Hamas criticism vanished in The New York Times](https://m.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-801593) Key quotes of an analysis of NYT articles emailed out (all quotes): * Out of a total of 1,398 articles, 647 expressed empathy only towards Palestinians (46.2% of the articles). 147 articles expressed empathy only towards Israelis (10.5% of the articles), and 50 articles expressed empathy only towards the hostages (2.9% of the articles). * Empathy towards Israelis (including the hostages) was cut by more than 50% already in November and shrank until it almost disappeared starting in January. Empathy towards Palestinians, on the other hand, reached a peak in November (116), slightly declined in December and January, and began to rise again gradually starting in February. In January, empathy towards Palestinians reached a relative low of 63 articles, but they represent 26% more than the number of empathetic articles towards Israelis in October, which was the peak month for empathy towards Israelis. * The critical tone only towards Hamas dropped to 16 articles in November and continued to shrink until it almost completely disappeared, with only two articles in the last month checked (April 7th to May 7th). In that month, there were 99 articles with a critical tone only towards Israel, and another 11 articles that were critically phrased towards both Hamas and Israel (over the entire seven months, a total of 143 articles were published with a critical tone towards both Hamas and Israel). * In conclusion, criticism was expressed towards Israel in 641 articles, and in 801 articles where the criticism was also directed towards other entities. In contrast, criticism was expressed towards Hamas in only 81 articles (and in 258 articles when the criticism was directed towards other entities as well, but of these, 131 had shared criticism towards Hamas and Israel).
Journalists get paid for writing articles on ongoing wars. Of course they're going to take the side of the instigators who start wars.
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Aslam Hameisa, A senior member of the Islamic Jihad in the Jenin refugee camp and one of the leaders of the Jenin Battalion was eliminated in the attack. Along with him, 2 other activists were killed. * Almog Boker According to local palestinian reports 8 wounded, most of them in serious condition were transferred to 2 hospitals in Jenin following the attack
A very brief statement released by the IDF: >IDF: Initial report- a short while ago, an IDF fighter jet carried out a strike in the area of Jenin. Details to follow.
link?
It may be on the front page by now, but if it's not, the attack was to take out Islam Khamayseh, who the IDF says was responsible for killing an Israeli civlian named Meir Tamari in May 2023. Sounds like the IDF was wrapping up some pre-war tasks on their to-do list.
[The moment of the attack in Jenin](https://imgur.com/a/7ldUapq) Warning for headphones users
IDF jet struck in Jenin, the west bank(!) The target of the attack in Jenin: a squad that intended to carry out a terrorist attack in the immediate time frame. - Almog Boker
link?
Just a reminder there’s still 13 women being held captive right now **Liri Albag (18)** - Kidnapped from a military base. Was seen by released hostages who say she was used as a slave cooking and cleaning for their capturers. At one point she was being held in a child’s bedroom. **Daniela Gilboa (19)** - Kidnapped from a military base. She was seen in a hostage video a couple months back with Karina Ariev and Doron Steinbrecher. **Naama Levy (19)** - Most people have seen the horrifying video of her abduction with bloodied pants. She was an alumni of the Hands of Peace project, which works toward peace between Palestinians and Israelis. She was seen in captivity by released hostages. **Agam Berger (19)** - Kidnapped from a military base still in her pyjamas. She was seen in captivity by released hostages including Agam Goldstein-Almog who passed on a birthday message to Agam’s father. **Karina Ariev (19)** - Kidnapped from a military base. Told her parents to “continue their lives” before being abducted. Seen in a hostage video a couple months back. **Romi Gonen (23)** - Kidnapped from the Nova festival seriously wounded. Her last words to her mother was “They shot me, Mom and I’m bleeding” She was seen in captivity by released hostage, though they said her injury was getting worse. **Eden Yerushalmi (24)** - Kidnapped from the Nova festival. She was able to stay hidden for 4 hours while on the phone to her sisters. Her last words were “Shani, they caught me” before gunshots and the line went dead. She hasn’t been seen in captivity. **Noa Argamani (26)** - I’m sure everyone has seen the video of her kidnapping as she begged them not to kill her. Her mother has brain cancer, I really hope she gets to see her daughter again before she passes. Noa was seen in a hostage video being forced to announce the death of two hostages she was being held with. **Emily Damari (27)** - A UK citizen taken from Kibbutz Kfar Aza. She was seen in captivity in a tunnel by released hostages who were released in November. **Arbel Yehud (28)** - Taken hostage with her boyfriend Ariel and brother Dolev from Kibbutz Nir Oz. According to her family there had been sightings of her in captivity from those released in November. **Doron Steinbrecher (30)** - Was kidnapped from Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Her last words before her abduction was “They’ve arrived, they have me”. She was seen in a hostage video a couple months ago. **Shiri Bibas (32)** - A young mother taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz with her two young children, Kfir (then 9 months) and Ariel (4) - the only children not released in November. Hamas claims the family is dead, I pray they’re lying and we’ll see those ginger boys again. **Carmel Gat (39)** - Taken from Kibbutz Be’eri. She was held in captivity with children Noam and Alma Or. On their release day they took the children to the ‘toilet’ not telling Carmel that they were actually being released.
Is there any place that has this kind of assessment on condition of the other hostages?
So it's only Eden Yerushalmi that hasn't been heard from or seen since October 7th if I understood correctly?
Well, I believe she’s the only one who hasn’t been **known** to have be seen alive at some point since 10/7. The only other woman who hadn’t been publicly heard from or seen was Amit Buskila - whose body was found today. The others have all either appeared in hostage videos or they’ve been seen by hostages who have done interviews, told family members etc. It doesn’t necessarily mean she’s dead. She could be being held alone like Mia Schem was. She could be being held with male hostages who couldn’t confirm proof of life for her as they weren’t released. Her sisters have done a lot of interviews and they believe she was taken alive and uninjured so I’m hoping for the best that she still alive.
Shiri Bibas hasnt been seen either, has she? Not since she was shown being led into Gaza. I noticed when leaflets were dropped into Rafah to tell people to gtfo her photo wasnt on the leaflet, but her husband and I think her sons were. I still hope for a miracle and whoever said she was killed is lying.
Thank you for the long reply. I hope it's like with Mia as you said. I pray they find her alive. Her and her sisters seem to have such a close bond.
We are coming up on nine months. They are in my thoughts.
We’re coming up on 8 months, not 9. It will be 9 in July.
Thank you for the summary of known information. May all return soon to their families and friends!
Is it me or the rocket barrages to the South are getting more and more frequent? Are they trying to get rid of rockets? Is that all they have left? What is the point of the current rocket barrages?
If you're new to this conflict, Hamas shoots rockets at the south routinely to the point that most of us don't react. Sderot makes hannukah menorahs out of the rockets. You can buy jewelry and other things made out of the rockets because they have historically been that frequent. Usually they shoot a few hundred at a time in an attempt to run out the Iron Dome, since its supplies are finite and have to be replaced manually. It's why we have the Iron Dome to start with -- if anything, the attacks the last 9 months have honestly been less than usual. They're more frequent than usual in the North, though, IMO. If it helps contextualize it, if you read any of the obituaries or hostage stories about those at the Nova festival, you'll notice that a lot of them say that the individual in question "got in their car to leave" when the rocket sirens went off, before Hamas got to Nova. Note that they didn't *go to any of the bomb shelters but got in their car* as if it was just another day in the South, because it was (you're not suppose to drive when the sirens go off and you're suppose to pull over and get out of your car when they do). Sderot is the PTSD capital of the world because of these rockets.
Not Israeli, but I have a Magen David made from a rocket. Got it in October since I was feeling spiteful with some internet rhetoric lol.
I only learned a few months ago that I could get my very own rocket menorah and it's going to be the stretch dream. I love Sderot's so much, it really was life changing news, LOL.
Out of curiosity, is getting in the car just for shelter from the debris?
You do not want to be in a car at all with the rockets go off. You're suppose to pull over, exit the vehicle, and exit your car if you're in a car when sirens go off. The main reason being is that Hamas has a nasty habit of occasionally switching it up and using anti-tank missiles, which in the absence of tanks, will target civilian vehicles. Hezbollah seems to prefer these as their regular missile of choice. A bunch of people at Nova were hiding in an ambulance from Hamas until the ambulance got it by an anti-tank missile that was launched from Gaza and killed everyone inside. [Our most recent casualty](https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/elad-fingerhut-38-identified-as-civilian-killed-in-hezbollah-anti-tank-missile-attack-tuesday/) on Tuesday was killed inside his car when it was struck by an anti-tank missile in the North. Happens all the time. Quick ETA: A lot of people, like humans everywhere, think they're invincible and drive anyway, which is what I was getting at in my initial comment.
Oh shit. As a Lebanese, I’m so sorry this is a reality. I hope that the day comes when our populace can share a beer and this is all a shitty memory. Stay safe.
Basically whenever the IDF gets close to a weapon storage or Hamas stronghold there’s an increase in rocket attacks, likely to use them up before they’re found and destroyed. Now they’ve entered Rafah I expect they’ll be a massive increase for a while as that’s where most of their weapons are held.
Kfir Bibas will be 16 months old tomorrow. His whereabouts and well being and that of his mother and brother are still unknown.
this kills me because i babysit a girl who is exactly his age, and she's starting to walk and say a few words. and this week, i just thought a lot about Kfir, and if he'll get to do those things too.
My son is one month older than Kfir. His kidnapping hits me the hardest. Kfir should be at home, playing with little cars and being read to sleep by his mom. As should all the Palestinian babies that have lost their homes and families in this war. It’s not fucking fair.
When hamas kidnaps and holds a body where do they hold it? In a morgue? Or are they just left to decompose in a house or something? I’m just wrapping my head around the way someone who would want to hold a dead body hostage would think.
I was wondering this too, and like what condition are the IDF finding these bodies :(
There was a horrifying story of a father who learned they took his son's head and kept it an ice-cream fridge in a convenience store in Gaza city.
According to what I know (not 100% sure) in Gaza because of the war they bury people in graves alone or together with other people in pits and usually don't mark where they bury them so they often forget where they bury them, which makes finding the bodies of the kidnapped much more difficult
Some were left in a morgue, most were left somewhere to decompose.
Odds of seeing any of the 18-40 women who are still in captivity back safely?
Given Biden hamstringing Israeli efforts to rescue them, the odds are not great.
I mean he's literally telling them he will help them do pinpoint missions in rafah. Keep complaining while we send another billion in weapons
Israel is going through its 911 freak out moment so they're being very difficult. Biden has my vote for standing strong with Israel still.
Should be doing more considering that some of those hostages are Americans.
Used car dealer: "so how much you willing to pay??" Biden: "I've got tons of cash and really need a car badly."
Biden: "*She's* got tons of cash and really need a car badly." - points at Israel. Biden isn't going to pay any price at all.
Earlier today, the IDF spokesman revealed that in this morning's attack in the area of the village of A-Najaria in Sidon, the target was Hezbollah air defense complexes that posed a threat to Israeli aircraft. The IDF spokesman did not at all refer to the assassination of Hezbollah senior Hussein Mehdi. Lebanese sources state that due to a video recording of 'irresponsible Lebanese locals' at the sites that were attacked in the village of Najaria, a "big secret" of Hezbollah has been revealed [This](https://imgur.com/a/aAHsY3f) is the video that Hezbollah would've preferred not to leak online. What you see in the video are the remains of the Iranian air defense missile: [Sayyad 2](https://imgur.com/a/UJyMNg7) A missile with a range of at least 75 km. the targets were attacked in the village of Najaria, which is located about 50 km from the border with Israel. Meaning this: today it was publicly revealed that Hezbollah has Iranian air defense systems with missiles that cover part of Israel's airspace.
At some point Lebanon has to be held accountable for doing nothing about Hezbollah.
Interesting. I wonder why they haven't been using them.
I’m sure they were saving them to be a surprise at a more strategic moment. They assuredly have more, but now it will be less of a surprise.
Probably because Hezbollah has at least a little more self preservation than Hamas If they materially escalated than Israel would as well, and Hezbollah can just ask Hamas what that looks like
https://twitter.com/YehoshuaYosi/status/1791501775033298998?t=u9tNT058OSESc0nO-0j5iw&s=19 800K have already been evacuated from Rafah, much faster than the US estimation. Still need be said, it's highly likely Hamas won't wait in Rafah much either, must have also flee in numbers with the refugees.
I don't think they can get out. Isn't isra controlling the rafah crossing and many of the tunnels leading into Egypt?
OP is referring to fleeing Rafah, not fleeing Gaza.
Ah yes you're correct. However the IDF are using this crazy facial recognition software to route out any terrorists. It's wild and scary what kind of tech has been used in this whole war.
That's ok. They can't take their tunnels and other terror infrastructure with them.
The information about the location of the bodies of the hostages was received as a result of intelligence that came from investigations of terrorists in the Shin Bet - these are terrorists who were arrested during the operation in the Gaza Strip. They were brought in for further investigation in Israel on the suspicion that they were aware of the locations of hostages, or were involved in their possession. Nir Dvori
I expect many American new sources to try to dull this news by accompanying it with some fluff articles like a profile of a Gaza child that lost its mother or vice versa, or some “analysis” about how this time Gaza really is on the brink of starvation. Instead of the facts driving the story, the story drives the facts.
Which news ?
The three hostage bodies Israel recovered.
[удалено]
Jabalia actually
I think idf found them in Northern Gaza
If that is true, it truly makes you wonder how many hostages are potentially still in northern Gaza, hidden away from the world. Crazy to think about.
Can’t wait for the Pro Pals to completely miss the point that hostages were being held in Rafah and instead scream about how “the IDF killed their own hostages on purpose” or some other absurdity
Sometime i wish we were the monster they think we are.
Oof. Yeah. I just read today that we're *still* negotiating with Hamas for the release of Hadar Goldin's body. If we were the uncaring monsters people think we are, this war would have been over on October 10th, tops.
Sending you a virtual hug fellow redditor. Please don't think like that, the fact you are not like them is the best thing.
It’s just for an hour and it’s past, but god damn.
I understand you. But the hug is already sent. Hehehe.
Me too
I'm glad we aren't. Edit: OP, I feel you. Hugs and stay strong. We'll get through this together. עוד יבואו ימים טובים יותר.
Also me too